Software Patents

There is no universally accepted definition of a software patent, but essentially they are another mechanism for trying to protect company’s intellectual property rights. If a company finds a novel way of solving a computational problem, they are able to patent the method (in some countries) and prevent other companies from applying the same solution (or to enable them to sue other companies who do).

Whereas it is right that companies should be able to protect their work and the investments they have made in R&D, software patents are tantamount to someone trying to patent fire.

Currently the only country to have adopted software patents wholesale is the USA, all other countries seem to have adopted a little common sense.

So, if you are a computer programmer or software architect working in the UK or Europe, you need to be aware of and adhere to Copyright law, Trademark law and Patent law. If on the other hand you work in this profession and are unfortunate enough to live in the US – emigrate.

Just when you thought it was safe to dump all your MySQL tools, switch SQLAdministrator for RoboMongo and dump ApachePHP for Node.js, it appears someone has thrown a thumping great spanner into the works!

So with the advent of Valve porting all their games to Linux, the first Domino fell. Here comes the next one, Crytek have just announced that their game engine will now run natively on Linux, so watch out for games like Crysis and Ryse coming to a Linux box near you soon!

I’ve been following Netcraft for many years and they’re a company who produce some very interesting and useful (free) Internet metrics and are often overlooked. Each month they produce a report detailing some of the more technical aspects of the Internet and what’s going on. Here’s a sample of their Newsletter (reproduced with permission) take a look!